


speak over her grave

by warandrunning



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: And An Elf Girl Who Dies A Lot, Crisis of Faith, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Linear Narrative, Traumaaaaaaaa, also:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 08:38:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17301422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warandrunning/pseuds/warandrunning
Summary: Edér loses track of how many times he watches Ari die, but he remembers every time she wakes up.





	speak over her grave

_“They asked, ‘Do you love her to death?’_

_I said, ‘Speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life.’”_

_— Mahmoud Darwish_

 

iv

 

“Seen the captain?”

The bosun looks skyward, and Edér follows his eyes up the mast. He spots her tangled in the rigging, auburn hair whipping like the sail.

“She doing anything useful?” Edér asks. He keeps his eyes on her as she swings from rigging to gaff, arms out for balance as she skips across the seawater-slick post.

Beodul snorts, also tracking her progress along the top of the sail. “As long as she doesn’t harm nothing, the captain can do whatever she wants on her ship.”

Edér hums noncommittally. He’s found Ari perched in the upper branches of enough trees at Caed Nua to know what she’s up to right now, and he figures it’s about time they had a chat. It’s been a few days of calm sailing since she woke up, and she’s all caught up on the happenings, but they haven’t really talked talked. He lifts his fingers to whistle for Ari’s attention, then thinks better of it and decides to risk the climb to level with her.

She sees him coming, but doesn’t say anything until he’s hoisting himself onto the gaff. “Careful, big fella.” All the same, she pats the wood next to her, kicking her bare feet out into thin air.

He settles next to her with a groan. “Gettin’ too old for this shit, you know.”

“Nonsense,” she replies with a small smile that says she knows he’s not serious. “One is never too old to climb a tree.”

They share a comfortable silence as Ari knots her hair in a messy braid, spine curled carefully to keep her balance.

“Edér,” Ari says, turning to look at him once her hands are free of her tangles. “How… how did you know I’d wake up?”

“Didn’t.”

She sucks in her breath, eyes welling with tears. “Oh, my love…”

“Don’t get all worked up about it,” Edér says. “I just bought a boat, hired a crew, tended to your soulless body for three weeks… vowed to challenge our old god for you. It’s nothin’, really.”

“‘It’s nothing,’ he says,” Ari repeats with a wet laugh, those tears spilling onto her face.

He cups her cheek in his hand, brushing a tear away with his thumb. “I’m not gonna let anyone take you before you’re ready to go,” he says, low and serious. “And even then, you’re gonna have to take me with you.”

She covers his hand with hers and turns to kiss his palm. Edér leans down to kiss her forehead and pulls her close, wrapping his arm around her waist to tuck her into his side. They sit like that for a while, staring out at the shifting waves.

When he gets bored of the silence, Edér pulls a copper from his pocket and rolls it between his fingers, making it disappear then reappear around his thumb and knuckles.

“Pand for your thoughts?” he asks.

Ari looks down at his hand, eyes tracking the coin’s movement. She sighs. “Thought I was done being dragged around by the whims of the gods,” she says. She pauses, and then, brighter, adds, “Also never thought I’d sail again, after I got kicked off the last boat, but here we are.”

She sits up a little to meet his eyes, giving him a wry look that twists her mouth upward. “You win some, you lose some, eh?” she says.

“If this is what you call winning,” Edér says, “I don’t ever wanna know what you think losing looks like.”

He holds her gaze a moment longer, watching for the shift. It goes this way, most the time — one version of the truth, then the jest, then, after, the real truth. And he’s right: She looks past his shoulder and something behind her eyes goes hollow and distant.

“I’m missing… something,” she says in a voice as empty as her eyes. “I can’t… I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I’m not whole.”

Edér pulls her back into him then, and she gives in easy, pressing her face into his chest. He rubs her back, fingers pressing against the sharp knobs of her spine. She’s far too thin after being in a coma so long.

“Don’t you worry, darlin’,” he says. “We’ll catch up to that soul-stealing son of a bitch.”

“Then what, E?” she asks, voice muffled in his shirt. “What if that doesn’t fix me?”

Edér sighs heavy. Ari has too many questions — and he’s not near smart enough to know how to answer them all. Too spent and worried for anything but honesty, he says, “Well, I don’t rightly know. But you’re breathing, and long as you’re breathing, the rest will get figured out.”

Proving his point, Ari takes a deep, shaky breath that she forces out through her mouth, where it runs into his chest. Edér kisses the top of her head again and buries his face in her hair, closing his eyes until all that’s left in the world is the sea salt-herbal soap smell of her, the sticky ocean breeze, and the steady rhythm of their breathing.

 

a

 

The first time Edér watches Ari die, there’s no supernatural forces at work. Her soul isn’t being torn apart by a god or even by herself.

No, the first time Ari dies, she gets gutshot by a bandit.

His memory of the whole ordeal is fuzzy, but he does remember shredding half of his cape to tie a bandage to stem the bleeding, loading her on his larder-door shield and helping carry her eight miles to Dyrford on the desperate hope there’d be a competent healer there to bring her back.

Ari stops breathing about halfway there, so they stop, and Pallegina does something magicky, Edér couldn’t say what exactly, and Ari comes back to life with a gasping shudder and a shriek of pain, and they move on.

It’s past nightfall by the time they get to the temple outside Dyrford. The Berathian priests don’t want to help, but a bag of coin makes them a whole lot friendlier. The whole group is marched down to some basement that looks more like a morgue than a place where people get better, and then the priests drag Ari into some side room, leaving the rest of them alone, with nothing to do but stick their thumbs up their asses and wait.

Edér waits outside the door for hours probably, long enough that he loses track of time. He stays even after the rest shack up at the inn for the night. When the healer finally comes out of Ari’s room, Edér scrambles to his feet and says, “Well?”

They wipe their hands down their robe, streaking bright red blood down their front, and shrug. “Done the best I can for her,” they say. “All that’s left is to pray to Berath it’s not yet time for her turn through the Wheel.”

Edér nods and hands her another bag of pands. “Thanks,” he says as he pushes past her into Ari’s room.

She looks so small, swallowed up even on the tiny temple cot. There’s no chair by the bed — which itself is more of a plank, really — so Edér just kneels next to her. He takes Ari’s limp hand between both of his, presses his lips to her knuckles, then rests his forehead against their hands.

And then, Edér does a thing he hasn’t done in more than a decade: He prays.

“Eothas,” he whispers, “I don’t know if you’re still out there, and even if you are I don’t know if you’re listening. But Ari believes you are, so I’m gonna give it a shot for her.”

He takes a deep breath and tries to remember one of Ari’s healing prayers.

“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth their wounds,” he intones, voice slipping easily into the long-forgotten cadence of worship. “He telleth the number of stars; he calleth them by all their names. Great is our god, and of great power; His understanding is infinite.”

He repeats it for good measure, then again because it sounds nice in his ears. When he’s finished, Edér lifts his head, and the skin of his forehead sticks to Ari’s fingers from how hard he’d been pressing against her. He’d let himself hope — but Ari hasn’t moved, face still as stone, freckles standing out dark against her sickly skin.

When Ari says her prayers, things tend to happen pretty immediately. She goes all glowy, and the guy she touches either catches on fire or gets better, depending on how she’s feeling. Edér’s not so blessed. Instead of fire or glowy hands, he’s left alone with a dying woman, looking like a fool talking to a god who’s been dead for near fifteen years, in the temple of another god entirely who’s whole thing is making sure folks who get dead stay dead when it’s their turn.

The thought is so ludicrous it drives a barking laugh right out of him.

“’S so funny?” Ari’s eyes are still closed, and she sounds like her throat’s lined with broken glass, but it was her talking, make no mistake.

Edér grabs her hand tighter, and she winces, so he quickly loosens his grip. “Nothin’,” he says. “Just glad you’re finally back.”

Ari wiggles her fingers inside the trap of his hands. “Me too,” she whispers.

He should kiss her, right then, he thinks. There’s blood crusted at the corners of her mouth and her lips are dry and cracked, but he doesn’t much care about that.

Ari’s eyes peek open then, as if she’s heard what he’s thinking, and she smiles at him with that bloody, wounded mouth. His stomach suddenly weighs a thousand pounds, and he couldn’t move in to kiss her even if he tried.

For now, it’s enough just to know she’s alive and to have the privilege of watching her breathe.

 

iii

 

Over the years, Edér loses track of how many times he watches the life leak out of Ari, how much time he spends holding vigil at her bedside. But he’s never done it on a ship before, never seen her gone so long, never not prayed to Eothas for her safe return.

Never seen their so-called “god” climb up out of the ground and steal the soul of the woman he loves.

It’s always something new with Ari. He’d say it’s what he loves about her, but sometimes he wishes the woman would sit still for five gods-damned minutes so he could try to keep her safe.

He certainly got his wish: She hasn’t moved in the weeks since they fled Caed Nua, bought a boat and cast off in the general direction of the great green statue. So it’s been a sight easier to keep an eye on her, but Hel if it isn’t seven kinds of scary, not to mention boring. He misses the sound of her voice, her laughter, the twinkle of life in her eyes. He misses how she always looked like she was ready and waiting for the next thing to happen — somewhere on the horizon to go, someone to meet, something to discover.

Edér doesn’t have any prayers to speak over her this time — after everything, prayers just turn to dust on his tongue. All he has is his own self, old and battered, so he just settles down next to her, lights his pipe, and waits.

For twenty-six days, Edér waits. He turns her over so she doesn’t get sores, dribbles water and broth down her throat, empties the makeshift bedpan he’s fashioned for her. He falls asleep thinking about her, wakes up thinking about her, spends every moment of every day worrying, wondering, waiting for her to see her way home from wherever she’s gone off to.

When she does come back, she wakes choking and flailing like a woman drowned, and Edér is up and at her side in an instant.

“Hey,” he murmurs, cupping the back of her head in his hand and laying one arm across her chest to keep her from thrashing. “Hey, hey… you’re okay. You’re safe.”

Ari’s eyes are wide and afraid and she bucks against him, gaze darting wildly around the room.

“Hey, hey,” Edér repeats, holding the back of her head so she’s forced to look at him. “Eyes on me, Ari. We’ll get through this.”

Ari nods, her throat working, but no sound comes out. She meets his eyes steadily and clutches his arm with both hands, still gasping.

“Deep breaths. Follow me. In—” Edér sucks a deep breath in, demonstrating — “and out,” and his breath whooshes through his mouth.

Ari’s chest heaves as she tries to match him. She shudders and hiccups, but she calms eventually, till they breathe in and out in sync. Her big brown eyes don’t waver from his the whole time.

Edér nods, and she nods back, so he lifts his arm from her chest. “You’re okay,” he says, more to himself than to her.

“E,” she says, and her voice cracks. She reaches up toward his face, fingers combing through his beard to curl around his jaw.

That’s what does him in. Something he’d been holding in tight, wrapped up and closed off inside him, breaks open at her touch, and a wet sob bubbles out of his mouth. He sags, head dropping onto her chest, and Ari cradles his head in her hands.

All the grief and fear he’d bottled up comes spilling out of him, and he loses any sense of that calm, measured breathing he’d worked so hard on with Ari. She just holds him as he cries, hands stroking slowly up and down his head and neck.

“You’ve gotta stop doing this to me, woman,” Edér says once he’s caught his breath.

Her fingers tighten in his hair at that. “How about next time you go and visit Berath instead,” she says, voice hoarse, and she draws her hands from his hair and down around his shoulders.

“Deal,” Edér says, and turns his ear to Ari’s chest so he can hear her heartbeat and feel the rise and fall of her breathing.

 

b

 

After Ari wakes up the rest of the camp with her screaming for the fourth night in a row, Edér figures someone should say something.

He settles casually as he can next to her by the banked fire that she’s idly stoking back to life. Her eyes flick up to him, and she smiles apologetically.

“I woke everyone again, didn’t I,” she says in that lilting Aedyran accent of hers. “I’m sorry…” she trails off, and the silence fills up between them while Edér waits to see if she’s got a thought she wants to finish.

When she stays quiet, he waves a hand and says, “Aw, don’t worry ‘bout it none. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

She pokes at the fire with her stick some more. She shrugs, and it’s more of a full-body squirm. “You’re just being kind.”

Edér leans back and lights his pipe, giving a few contemplative puffs before offering it to Ari. She takes it gratefully, cradling the pipe in the corner of her mouth.

“I get the night terrors, too, you know,” Edér says while she’s occupied with smoking.

“From—?” she glances up at him again and cuts herself off, out of politeness, he thinks.

“That big war couple years back, over our god, yeah.” His dreams are — fire and blood, and a man with a glowing lighthouse beacon where his head should be. Been long enough now that they don’t shock him into screaming himself awake anymore, but he still wakes all the same, still can’t get back to sleep all the same.

She nods, then passes the pipe back to Edér. He wonders at what point all the talking he’s doing becomes too much talking, but presses on anyway. “You always get the terrors, or is that a new Watcher thing?”

Her brow wrinkles, but when she turns to face him the frown is gone, replaced by a crooked smirk. “The Watcher dreams make my old nightmares look like child’s play,” she says breezily. She looks back into the fire again. Moments later, she continues: “I — they — died in this one,” she says to the fire, almost too quiet for Edér to hear.

“Well, you’ve died before yourself,” he says. “Can’t imagine how that’s something you can’t handle by now.”

That finally pulls a genuine smile from her. “You always know just what to say to make a girl feel better, don’t you.”

Edér puffs up his chest proudly. “Sure as shit do,” he says, and takes a satisfied pull from his pipe.

With a shiver that can’t possibly be from cold — she’s barely a foot away from the fire and the early fall chill hasn’t quite set in yet, besides — Ari pulls her blanket more tightly around her shoulders.

“Did you know,” she says, “that when your guts get sliced out of you, they steam?”

“Uh, yep. Yeah. It ain’t a pretty sight.” Edér, generally speaking, tries to not relive his memories from the Saint’s War. Some things stay with you, though, no matter how much you try to forget. “Is that—” Edér stops, swallows back a shudder — “is that what happened in your dream?”

Ari just nods, then sets her chin on her knees.

“All the screamin’s starting to make more sense to me now,” Edér says.

She gives him a wan look out of the corner of her eye.

“That’s not even the worst part,” she says. “The worst is how they feel all the time. Hopeless, paranoid, afraid… that’s no way to live.” She shakes her head. “They’re devoid of all goodness. And I remember it when I wake up, like it was me feeling that, and I just…”

“That’s just dreams,” Edér says, and, against his better judgement, he adds, “Ain’t nothing bad in you, I know it. Don’t be believing what those nightmares are tellin’ you.”

“Thanks, Edér. That’s kind of you to say.” Ari yawns, but tries to hide it, curling into herself and pulling her blanket tight around her.

“You should try and get some rest, Watcher,” Edér says. “I’ll be up a while yet.”

He expects her to retreat to her bedroll a few feet away from the fire, but instead she scoots closer and tucks herself in against his side, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Now hold on,” he says, all blustering indignance. “You fall asleep on me, I’ll be stuck right here the rest of the night.”

“Yes, that is the idea,” she says. “Now hold still so I can fall asleep.”

Ever obedient, Edér takes one last deep breath and holds it, keeping his body still as a statue.

“Not like that, you creep,” she says, butting her forehead into his arm.

Edér lets all his breath out in a long whoosh and a laugh. “Oh, that’s a relief,” he says after he gasps. “Thought you were trying to kill me or something.”

She indulges him with a soft chuckle. It’s quiet for so long that Edér thinks she’s finally fallen asleep, but then she whispers, “It helps to listen to you breathe.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. Well, he could always make another joke — “Now who’s the creep?” — but that wouldn’t fit. Truth be told, it feels nice to be helpful. So he says: “I’m glad.”

 

ii

 

There are no survivors.

Well, excepting him. And her, but he’s not sure whether to count her as a survivor yet. She’s breathing, at least, so that counts for something.

The carnage of Caed Nua might not be the worst Edér’s seen, but it’s definitely in the top five. Most of the keep’s courtyard, along with the keep itself, has collapsed into the cavernous depths of the hole Eothas left when he climbed up from underground. Bodies are scattered about, detritus left from when their souls got sucked out. Beyond, giant footprints have carved chunks out of the earth and flattened trees, marking Eothas’ path clearer than day.

Edér is still trying to wrap his mind around what just happened when there’s a voice in his head.

 _Edér_ , the voice says, _please, can you assist me? I am trapped in the keep._

It takes him longer than he cares to admit to figure out that it’s the Steward of Caed Nua talking to him. Edér looks back toward the keep, half of it sunk into the depths from where Eothas rose up, and wonders how in the Hel the Steward survived that.

He’s not keen on leaving Ari alone in the open, so he lifts her in his arms and carries her, bridal-style, around the edge of the hole and through the threshold of the ruined grand hall. He picks his way through the rubble to the throne, where the Steward’s head and shoulders lay prone, cleaved from the rest of the seat.

 _The lady_ , the Steward says. _Is she…_

Edér lays Ari down on her broken throne, then bends to lift the Steward upright. “She’s not dead,” he says, sitting at the dais with a heavy sigh. “Eothas walked off with her soul.”

 _She always was a strong one_ , the Steward says. And then, abruptly, she adds: _I am glad you are here._

Edér wishes he had his pipe. Be nice to have something to do with his hands. “Stewa— ma’am—” he’s never known what to call this stone lady. “I’m not sure what comes next here.”

She’s quiet, and after a moment, she asks, _What would Lady Lightbringer do?_

He thinks of Ari, moments ago, screaming defiance in the face of a god. Moments, but it feels like an eternity.

“I imagine she’d go after Eothas, try to put a stop to him killin’ people.”

_Then that is what we must do. We must do what we can to save her, and restore peace._

Easier said than done, Edér thinks, but he keeps that to himself. He procures a rickety wagon and coaxes a spooked mare out of the half-collapsed stable, then sets to loading the wagon with what little he has left: Ari’s body, the Steward’s bust, and some scattered valuables the Steward pointed out that they’ll be selling off posthaste.

It’s rough going, following Eothas’ path south through the forest. Cracked trees lie fallen between the footsteps, and kicked-up earth and stones trip up the horse and catch the wagon’s wheels. Guiding the horse gives Edér something to focus on, at least, but his mind still wanders despite himself, mostly just replaying what all just happened. He’s certainly seen gorier battlefields, but the rest of it — the giant statue coming to life, the souls of kith just up and leaving their bodies — that’s all new. New and — strange. The strangest. Say what you will about Eothas, but he certainly has a knack for the dramatic.

Edér is deep in his considerations when another thought barges in. He keeps it to himself for a moment. When nothing happens, he says, “Hey, Steward, can you hear me thinkin’?”

 _No_ , she says. _I only hear that which you speak aloud._

He thinks some more, and then he asks her, “Do you think Ari can hear us?”

The Steward is quiet while she considers. _I know not what our lady experiences. But were I able to bring her comfort with my voice, I would do so._ The Steward hesitates, and it’s strange to feel in his head the sense of words left unsaid. _… ‘Twould bring me some measure of comfort, as well, to listen to the voice of another._

Edér thinks about that for a moment, then clears his throat and begins the song Ari always sang to him when they would part. His voice, gruff and lined with the dust from Caed Nua and more than a little off-key, doesn’t sound near as nice as Ari’s. But the words are still the same.

“ _Farewell, farewell, my own true love, this parting gives me pain_  
_I'll be your own true guiding light when I return again_  
_My thoughts shall be of you, of you when the storm is riding high_  
_Farewell, my love, remember I’m your faithful sailor boy._ ”

 

c

 

It’s pretty regular for Edér to be awake before Ari. She’s not a very deep sleeper — she always looks like she’s just on the verge, eyes barely closed, brow almost smooth, breathing not quite even. So even though he’s usually awake before her, she’s always close behind. That doesn’t mean waking up next to her and watching her sleep is any less of a revelation every time it happens.

This morning, Edér has had about enough of revelations and he’s happy enough that Ari is already awake when he re-joins the land of the living. She’s curled up in an armchair across the room, writing slow and careful in her journal.

“Are the gods still liars, or was that just a bad dream?” he asks.

She starts, surprised at the sound of his sleep-froggy voice. When she looks up at him, her smile is layered: bitter and rueful and relieved. “No more bad dreams here,” she says.

“Then why ain’t you in bed with me still?” Edér says, patting the empty space next to him. The action stretches the tender skin and muscle at his left ribs and Edér winces, curling back in on himself to cover the bruise.

“You’re hurt?” Ari asks, and she’s at his side in a moment. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice. Why didn’t you say something, you big lout?”

It’s pretty regular for Edér to get himself hurt in a fight, and for Ari to feel obliged to patch him up afterward. So she whips the blankets off him and tugs his shirt up, and obediently he pulls it up to his armpits.

“Hold still,” she whispers, leaning in to get a look at him. She carefully splays her fingers across the mottled bruise, but her small hands don’t nearly cover the deep, angry red-and-purple splotches covering his side. She plants a tender kiss below his heart, and as she opens her mouth to speak the healing words, her breath catches.

“What? What is it?” he lifts his arm and cranes his neck to get a better look.

Ari frowns. She lifts her chin and blinks up at the ceiling. “I don’t, um. I don’t know how to do this without praying.”

“Oh.” He covers her hands with one of his, and her glance flicks down to him, then away again. That’s a conundrum he hadn’t considered.

“I’ll… try anyway.” She squeezes her eyes shut and heaves a sigh. Then she’s quiet and still for a moment, and nothing happens.

Normally, her hands do the glowing thing, his skin goes warm and tingly (Ari’s many talents are good for more than just healing), his wounds knit themselves up and his pain goes away. It’s all very convenient.

It gets to be less convenient when the god that powered the healing turns out to be a fake.

Ari rocks back on her heels, away from the bed, and plops down cross-legged onto the floor. She wrings her hands together in her lap and stares intently down at them.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Edér hangs his arm off the side of the bed and curls his fingers, beckoning her back to him. She obliges, scooting forward and taking his hand in hers. She leans forward to press her lips to his knuckles.

“Got nothing to be sorry for, darlin’,” Edér replies, squeezing her hand. “We’ll just have to find something else for you to put your faith in.”

 

i

 

Their moments of quiet together are few and far between in the years that follow the whole Thaos business. Keeps need ladying, towns need mayoring, and still people come to Ari and Edér — both together and separate — for aid, for protection, sometimes even for an autograph.

So when Edér finds himself traveling west on some very official, very serious town business, he can’t help but pass through Caed Nua, what with its situation on some major crossroads. And if he stays for a night or two, well, it’s a long journey, and he’s awful tired.

Only the lady of the keep is already preoccupied when he arrives. Something about hosting a delegation of scholars from somewhere way off yonder, the Steward tells him. Just wait in the lady’s quarters, she tells him — she’ll inform the lady of his presence.

It’s hours and hours before Brighthollow’s doors burst open and he hears Ari shout his name from the atrium.

“Up here!” he calls back, and her clattering up the stairs is music to his lonely ears.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” she says, breathless, when she appears in the doorway. She closes the rest of the distance between them in one flying leap, throwing herself into his lap and peppering his face with kisses. “The bursar would not stop talking.” She kisses him full on the mouth then, finally, and his senses are overcome by the feel and taste and smell of her.

“Done a lot of waiting for you, you know,” he says, low and husky, when they break for breath. “Leave a man alone too long, he’s liable to get… creative.”

That makes Ari grin, their mouths so close he feels it more than sees it. “Is that so?” she murmurs against his lips. “Then why don’t you show me all these creative thoughts you’ve had, mister.”

Edér is all too happy to oblige her.

Later, after, they’re dead asleep when an earthquake cracks the keep from stem to stern. Brighthollow is mostly unharmed in that first wave, and they scramble out of bed and outside just in time for the second wave to knock them off their feet.

The ground sags beneath them, then crumbles as an enormous hand made of adra breaches the surface. The top layers of Caed Nua’s underground caverns give way to the ascent of the statue. The hollow space beneath the keep is exposed to open air, sucking everything that lived on top — the stables, the gardens, the workshop, the homes — into its depths.

Edér and Ari scrabble away from the hole opening beneath them. He can hardly make heads or tails of what’s happening. Screams of pain and fear ring in his ears, and the ground still roils, the whole world upheaved by the great green statue making its way up from the depths. At its full height, the thing easily dwarfs the keep and the forest around it, twice at least the height of the tallest point of the keep — when it had still been standing, that is.

Edér can’t see many bodies in the chaos, but he can count how many are dead. The wisps of their souls, shimmering and purple, flutter all around the adra giant, drawn toward its heart. The giant trudges onward, crushing one person beneath its foot and absorbing their soul. It sees another person fleeing, and reaches down to pluck them up. The statue pulls their soul out, then lets the body fall to the ground.

Edér and Ari have no weapons, no armor — they’re barely wearing clothes. But Ari screams and rushes toward the giant all the same, golden light streaming from her splayed fingers. The ray hits the giant’s torso — and does nothing at all. It stops, though, and turns to look down at her.

Then they both see it: The sun-and-stars symbol of Eothas glows on the statue’s forehead.

“No,” Edér whispers. “No, it can’t be.”

“It is,” Ari says, tears running clean tracks down her mud-streaked face. She looks at Edér then, and he’s seen that resolute set of her brow enough times to know it spells trouble for them both. “I love you,” she says to him, then takes off running full bore toward their forsaken god.

There isn’t time to do anything but watch her go, her body backlit by Eothas’ green adra glow. Eothas, too, watches her approach. When she stops at his feet, she looks so impossibly tiny.

“EOTHAS,” Ari screams up into the sky. “You’ll answer for this, do you hear me? You’ll pay for your crimes!”

Eothas tilts his head and kneels to get a closer look at her. “Crimes?” he says. His voice is kind, only adding to the cruelty of what he’s done here, and it echoes, rumbling through Edér and weighing down his gut.

“I take only what is needed, priestess.” At that, Eothas presses a finger to Ari’s chest, and like a flame snuffed out, she collapses. Edér watches her soul leave her body and get absorbed into Eothas, and there’s not a gods-damned thing for him to do about it.

Eothas stands and walks away, and Edér is left alone in the ruins.

“Hey!” He shouts after Eothas. “Hey, what about me?”

Eothas turns back again and regards Edér. “Someone must be left to spread word of my return. Who better than a lapsed believer?”

And then Eothas is done with them. He leaves, unstoppable and inevitable. Edér can’t help but think Eothas looks like nothing less than doom upon all the world, towering above the trees, with the purple fire of souls flitting all about him.

Edér runs to Ari’s side and sinks to his knees. Her eyes are empty and glassy, skin ashen, and she doesn’t react when he lifts her wrist to find her pulse. It’s there, barely, sluggish and irregular. So he leans down to her face to listen for her breath: It’s the same as her pulse, shallow and slow. Alive at least, he thinks. Long as she has breath, he has hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Edér's prayer: Psalm 147:3-7, King James Version  
> Edér's song: The Faithful Sailor Boy
> 
> Thanks for reading! Holler at me on Tumblr, I'm restivewit.


End file.
